AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOLAR POWER SATELLITE CONCEPT Dr. Peter E. Glaser, Vice President Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts "It may be that, in the future, man will have no use for energy and be indifferent to stars except as spectacles, but if (and this seems more probable) energy is still needed, the stars cannot be allowed to continue in their old way, but will be turned into efficient heat engines." This statement of Bernal1 rings even more true today, now that we have rediscovered the inexhaustible potential of solar energy. A. SOLAR ENERGY DEVELOPMENT The first time that solar energy was "discovered" was in the last half of the 19th Century in response to the energy needs of the industrial revolution. The efforts to harness solar energy which started, then accelerated through the beginning of the 20th Century, and then subsided with the successful development of energy economics based, at first, on coal and, subsequently, on the use of liquid petroleum fuels. Again, even amid our seemingly plentiful energy resources in the mid-195O‘s, there was a resurgence of interest characterized by the symposia in Phoenix and in Tucson, and in 1961, the U.N. Conference on New Sources of Energy. In 1962, Hubbert2 indicated that the world's fossil fuel resources were finite, and that their availability would be only an ephemeral event—on the time scale of recent human history—of, perhaps, a few centuries. Subsequently, in 1965, Gaucher's projection3 of energy consumption in the United States indicated that soon after the year 2000, a gap would be created which could be filled by solar energy. During this period, there were growing concerns about the environment, about the role of nuclear power and, more recently, about the large- scale use of coal as a long-term replacement for liquid petroleum fuels. These concerns and uncertainties were further compounded by the 1imits-to-growth philosophy and its implications on the possibility, in the face of burgeoning populations and diminishing resources, of maintaining living standards. And finally in this setting, culminating in the dramatic events of October 1973, the potential of solar energy was rediscovered. Now, there is a growing impatience to develop solar energy for widespread use, but despite optimistic expectations, the large-scale use of solar energy may take longer, be more difficult, and cost more than has been projected. What is clear is that no one energy source will meet all foreseeable future energy demands, that the search for new sources of nonrenewable fuels can only put off the day of their ultimate exhaustion and that there are major uncertainties in achieving the potential of known energy technologies. But, there is no need to rely on just one solution to the energy dilemma. The key to assuring future energy supplies will be the combination of apparently unlikely technologies and their applications in the most appropriate manner.
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